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The implications behind today's big news that San Francisco has an unreliable voting system are mind-boggling. It's bad enough that it's going to take weeks of hand-counting ballots before we'll know the results -- not just after this November's snoozer election, but also after the high-stakes February and June contests. Read more »

The Elections Department has notified proponents of move to recall Sup. Jake McGoldrick that their effort has failed. The campaign -- sparked by business interests who oppose the Geary bus rapid transit proposal and McGoldrick's sponsorship of Healthy Saturdays -- turned in 3,844 signatures on Sept. 14, according to Elections officials. Read more »

Alex "Grasshopper" Kaplan was at our office today to talk about his campaign for mayor, but he almost didn't make it; the guy, who has been in and out of jail for the past few weeks, got popped yesterday on what has to be one of the more utterly bogus charges in recent memory.

See, Kaplan is under a restraining order; he's supposed to stay away from Sup. Ed Jew. Read more »

Newsom press secretary Nathan Ballard -- who got the job after his predecessor was caught lying to reporters -- has always seemed to me a fairly robotic center-right spinmeister, delivering carefully scripted comments without much feeling or human warmth. Or maybe he just hates me and the Guardian, as I've heard from others at City Hall, which is why he's generally fairly unresponsive to our requests and terse when he finally does answer. Read more »

Newsom's decision to ask for the resignations of hundreds of city employees and appointed commissioners was a impetuous one made with no legal advice, his press secretary has admitted to the Guardian. And now, the strange and sweeping gesture is raising troubling legal questions and potential long term problems for many city employees. Read more »